no change, with the exception of the growth of the trees; in their solitary walks the birds still build their nests in peace. The same fashion of meeting in these gardens no longer exists as when Madame Recamier, the most beautiful of Frenchwomen, was accustomed to appear there, followed by a crowd. It affords me great pleasure to gaze from the green sward at the long lines of horses and fashionable carriages on the drives in Hyde Park, among which is seen my own empty tilbury, whilst I, having resumed the character of a poor gentleman emigré, saunter up the walk, where the exiled confessor was formerly accustomed to read his breviary. It was in these same gardens I first projected the "Essai Historique;" there, looking over the journal of my wanderings beyond sea, I drew from it the loves of Atala; in these gardens, after having wandered to a distance into the country, under a lowering sky, glowing, and as it were, penetrated with the polar light, I drew the first sketches of the passions of "René." By night I laid up the harvests of my reveries by day, in the "Essai Historique" and in the "Natchez." The two manuscripts proceeded abreast, although I was often in want of paper to record them, and fastened the leaves together by bits of wood from the windowsill for want of thread. These scenes of my first inspirations always make me feel their power, by reflecting the mild light of my recollections on the present; and thus I feel a suitable disposition to resume my pen. How many hours are lost in embassies! Time is no more wanting to me here than in Berlin to continue my Memoirs-an edifice which I am constructing from bones and ruins. In London my secretaries were eager in the morning to go to pic-nics, and in the evening to balls. With all my heart! The men, Peter, Valentine, and Lewis, in their turn were off to the ale-house ;-and the women, Rose, Peggy, and Maria, for a walk. I was delighted at it! The key of the outer door was left with me, and the care of the house was committed to his Excellency the Ambassador; if any one knocks, he will open the door. Every one is gone out ; here am I alone; let us resume our work. I have just said, that twenty-two years ago I made the first sketches of the Natchez and Åtala in London; in my Memoirs I am precisely at the period of my travels in America; this will perfectly accord. Let us suppress these two-and-twenty years, as if they were in reality blotted out from my life, and let us set out for the forests of the New World; the account of my embassy. will recur, if it please God, at its proper date; but if, at the least, I remain here a few months, I shall have leisure to proceed from the Falls of Niagara to the army of the princes in Germany, and from the army of the princes to my retreat in England. The Ambassador of the King of France can relate the history of the French emigré in the very place to which he was exiled. London, from April till September, 1822. CROSSING THE OCEAN. THE preceding book closed with my embarkation at St. Malo. Our ship soon cleared the channel, and the swell from the west announced the Atlantic. It is very difficult for those who have never been at sea to form an idea of the feelings experienced when nothing whatever is visible from the deck of the ship except the solemn face of the deep. There is a certain independence in a sailor's life which arises from the absence of land; the passions of men are left behind upon the shore; between the world which is left and that after which we seek, the element on which we are borne is the only substitute for love and for country; no more duties to discharge, no more visits to make, no more newspapers, no politics. The very language of sailors is not that of common life; it is a language such as that spoken by the ocean and the sky, the calm and the tempest. You dwell in a universe of waters, amongst creatures whose dress, tastes, manners, and countenance bear no resemblance to the dwellers on land; they possess the hardihood of the sea-wolf, and the quickness of a bird; their brow is traced by no marks of the cares of society; the wrinkles which traverse it resemble the folds of the shortened sail, and are less the effect of age than of winds and waves. The skin of these beings, impregnated with salt, is red and hard, like the surface of the rock lashed by the billows. Sailors have a passion for their ship: they weep with regret on parting from it, and with joy on returning to it. They find it impossible to remain at home: after having sworn a thousand times no longer to expose themselves to the dangers of the sea, they cannot resist returning to it again, as a young man is unable to tear himself from his beloved, even although she tempestuous and faithless. prove In the docks of London and Plymouth it is by no means rare to find sailors who have been born on ship-board, and from their childhood to old age have seldom been ashore; their acquaintance with land is formed from the deck of their floating cradle- -mere spectators of a world into which they have not entered. In a life reduced to so small a space, the clouds above and the deep below, every thing assumes the forms of life to the sailor: an anchor, a sail, a mast, a gun, are the objects of his affection, and each of them has its history. The sail was rent on the coast of Labrador; the master sailmaker put on the patch which you see. The anchor saved the vessel, when she was drifted, after the loss of other anchors, into the middle of the coral rocks of the Sandwich Islands. The mast was broken in a hurricane off the Cape of Good Hope; it was only a single pole; it is much stronger now that it is made of two. The gun is the only one which was not dismounted in the battle of the Chesapeake. The most interesting news on board are, that the lead has been just heaved; the ship is making ten knots. The sky is clear at noon; an observation has been taken; we are in such a latitude. The ship's place is marked; so many leagues have been sailed. The declination of the needle is so many degrees; we have gone further north. The sand in the hour-glass does not run freely; there will be rain. Procellaria have been observed in the ship's track; clear up for a squall. Flying fish have appeared to the south; the weather is about to become calm. A bright spot has appeared in the clouds to the west; it is the sign of wind; it will blow from that quarter to-morrow. The colour of the sea is changed; pieces of wood and seaweed are observed floating; gulls and ducks have been seen; a small bird has just perched on the shrouds ; a good look-out must be kept; land is near, and it is dangerous to come on the coast by night. In the pen there is a favourite, and, so to speak, a sacred cock, which has outlived all the others; he is famous for having crowed during a battle, as if he had been in a farm-yard amongst the hens. Below deck there is a cat, which has sailed twice round the world, and been saved from shipwreck on a barrel. The ship's boys give the cock biscuit steeped in wine, and Malou has the privilege when he pleases of sleeping in the mate's berth. The old sailor is like an old labourer. Their harvests are different, it is true; the sailor has led a wandering life, the labourer has never quitted his field; but both are equally well acquainted with, and predict futurity whilst they plough their furrows. To the one the lark, the redbreast, and the nightingale are prophets; to the other the storm-birds and the kingfisher. They retire in the evening, the former to his berth, the latter to his hut; frail dwellings; but the storm that shakes them does not disturb easy consciences: "If the wind tempestuous is blowing, The sailor knows not when death may take him unawares, or on what coast he may lose his life: perhaps when his last sigh has mingled with the wind, he shall be launched into the bosom of the waves, bound to two oars, to continue his voyage; perhaps he may be buried in a desert island, which will never again be visited, even as he has slept isolated in his hammock, in the middle of the ocean. The ship alone forms an object of interest; sensible to the slightest movement of the helm, a winged steed, she obeys the hand of the pilot, as a horse yields to the hand of the rider. The beauty of the masts and cordage, the activity of the sailors in climbing the shrouds and handing the sails, the different aspects under which the ship presents herself, sometimes heeling under the power of a contrary gale from the south, and sometimes running, all sail set, before a northerly breeze-combine to form. of this almost intelligent machine, one of the greatest triumphs of human ingenuity. One while the surge with its foam breaks and dashes against the hull-at another, the peaceful waves yield a ready and easy passage to the prow. The flags, streamers, and sails, complete the beauty of this palace of Neptune; the lower sails, in all their extent, are bulged out like vast cylinders; the upper ones, crossed in the middle by the buntline, resemble the bosom of a Siren. Driven on by a powerful wind, with her keel she furrows the field of the sea, as with a ploughshare. On this ocean-road, along which there are neither trees, villages, towns, towers, belfries, nor tombs to be seen; on this way, marked neither by columns nor milestones,-whose only limits are the waves-whose relays are the winds-and whose lights are the stars-the meeting of other vessels forms the most pleasing adventure, except when one happens to be in quest of unknown countries and seas. Ships discover each other by their telescopes on the distant horizon, and immediately take means to run close to each other. The crew and the passengers crowd the decks, the ships approach, hoist their colours, shorten sail, and heave-to. As soon as all is silent, the two captains, stationed on their respective poops, hail with the speaking-trumpet: "What ship is that ?"" Of what port?"- Captain's name ?” -"Whence from ?"- "How many days out ?"-" Latitude and longitude ?"-"A good voyage!" They shake out the reefs; the sails fill. The crew and passengers of the two ships look at each other as they speed on their course, without uttering a word: some are hastening to the climes of Asia, others to Europe, which will equally see them die. Time urges on its course, and separates travellers upon land, more quickly still than the wind separates them on the ocean; a signal is made from afar-farewell!-the common port is Eternity. 66 And if the vessel met should be that of Cook or La Pérouse ? The boatswain on board our Maloan vessel was an old supercargo, named Pierre Villeneuve; his name alone made me entertain a regard for him, for it was that of my good nurse. He had served in India with De Suffren, and in America under Count D'Estaing, and had been in several engagements. Seated in the fore part of the ship, near the bowsprit, like a veteran beneath a vine in his little garden, in the convent of the Invalides, Pierre, whilst chewing a quid of tobacco, which puffed out his cheek as if he had a swelled face, used to describe to me the moment of clearing the decks, the effects of the discharges of artillery, the havoc caused by the shot in its rebound amongst the guns, their carriages and the timber-work. I made him tell me about the Indians, the negroes, and the colonists. I asked him how the people were clothed, how the trees grew, what was the colour of the earth and the sky, and what the taste of the fruits; whether pine-apples were better than peaches, and palm-trees more beau |